Euzkadi

Tapas dishes are designed to be traded back and forth with ease, making them ideal for dinner dates or as emergency currency in Spain. Stock up stomach banks with today's Groupon: for $25, you get $50 worth of Basque cuisine at Euzkadi.

Chefs at Euzkadi craft an eclectic array of tapas and traditional dishes native to the Basque region, with seafood, meats, and vegetables cloaked in spices suffused with Spanish and French influences. Slip into an intimate booth and kick off flights of tapas with an order of Spanish mixed olives ($6.95), goat cheese and honey croquettes ($7.95), or sautéed spinach polka-dotted with raisins, chickpeas, and pine nuts ($7.95). After whetting appetites, order a second round of pintsize shareables such as piquillo peppers stuffed with spicy tuna tartare ($12.95) or cheese-filled dates garbed in a Serrano ham jumpsuit ($9.95). Couples can also split a double serving of the restaurant's signature seafood paella awash with aquatic edibles and chorizo sourced from bountiful coral-reef razorbacks ($45.95). Plates jostle for table real estate with Spanish wines served by the glass ($7+) and cava cocktails such as the Casablanca, which infuses bubbly spirits with pomegranate juice ($10). Bid a delectable adieu to dinner with desserts that include chocolate mousse and soft almond cake stuffed with vanilla custard ($7.95 each).

Euzkadi's décor pays homage to prehistoric caves, with a ceiling scrawled with primal paintings of hunters and buffalo, and a bar staffed by a friendly trilobite. On Tuesday nights, the restaurant's cozy quarters are filled with the thrum of live flamenco and world fusion bands, and on the weekends, Euzkadi's exposed-brick walls pulse with beats from a live DJ.

Euzkadi

The light strumming of flamenco guitar accompanies pitchers of sangria and sizzling platters of paella at Euzkadi, a Michelin Guide –recommended Basque restaurant. Diffuse lighting illuminates small plates of tapas such as Spanish olives and salmon a la plancha as nimble waiters carry them through the rustic, wine-cellar-like space. Glasses of red riojas, sparkling cavas, and after-dinner ports float in from behind the full bar or hop off the sturdy wood beams that hold the bottles out at a 90-degree angle. The restaurant's exposed bricks and soft lighting, further darkened with thick, velvet drapes, lead up to a ceiling of primitive drawings of hunters, buffalo, and motocross races designed to mimic the cave drawings in the Basque region of northern Spain.